Nowadays, it is unthinkable for a brand not to have social media. Much of a company's visibility comes from platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, among others. But if you don't know how to take advantage of your social media or you haven't created them yet, consider the following steps to enhance your corporate image in the online environment.
Before you dive into the whole process of creating social profiles and publishing any type of content, you need to create a style guide for your corporate social networks.
We must be aware that all the information we publish on corporate social networks will have an impact on the company's image . Hence the importance of analyzing and being clear about the messages we want to convey to our followers.
In this post I'm going to explain the 7 essential steps to create a style guide for your business's social media . Let's get started!
1. Define your corporate identity
If you have already defined your corporate identity, great, you will save a lot of time. However, if you have never stopped to think about your company's values, logo, typography and corporate colours, it is time to invest time in defining your identity to highlight what characterises you and differentiates you from your competitors.
2. Set Social Media goals
Once you have defined your corporate identity and know who you are, it is time to think about what you want to achieve through your social media activity.
In the context of social networks, there are mainly three objectives:
Reach new audiences (reach).
Convert followers into customers.
Retain customers.
You can focus on just one of the three goals, or you can tailor your social media marketing strategy for each platform . For example, you can pursue the first two goals on Twitter, and the third goal on Facebook.
These objectives may change over time as new social networks, strategies or other objectives may appear.
3. Choose social networks
If your company already has social profiles, it's time to make a list of all of them. Even if it's a social network that is neglected, we want to make a list of all the social networks in which our company has an account.
The same applies if you don't have any social media. It's a good idea to make a list of all the social media networks and then select those that best fit your social media strategy .
Once the list is made, we need to analyze it carefully. How does each social network fit with the objectives of our strategy?
If you have several objectives, as we discussed in the previous step, you could classify the list into different segments based on the objectives (reach, conversion and retention). You should consider whether your team has enough capacity to manage the social networks you have selected in your list. At this point, you have to be realistic, because it is better to have a few social profiles with quality content than many accounts that are poorly maintained .
4. Determine the style of the messages
Each social network has a different style according to its functionality. This aspect must be taken into account, but it should not influence the style of your company's messages.
The tone you use should be consistent with your brand values so that it resonates with your target audience. For example, if your service and/or product is within the children's sector, your messages can be composed of wordplay, cute and friendly words, etc.
The style guide should also define which textual and audiovisual elements are going to be used. Do the emojis match your brand image? If so, don't be shy and use them in your text messages, but don't overdo it either. My advice is that depending on the type of information you are transmitting, you should use a maximum of 2 or 3 emoticons.
As for the visual style, you need to specify what type of content fits your company's image and how you want to convey it. For example, whether you're only going to publish photos or also videos. If you're only going to use images, make sure they all follow the same editorial line, such as putting your company logo at the bottom and a phrase on each photo.
If the option of publishing only photos doesn't convince you, give videos a chance! A social account full of videos and photos is much more attractive and dynamic. Video marketing is a safe bet, but you should specify in the style guide of your social networks what type of videos would be published, because you would have to differentiate between your own videos, which are those made by the company itself, and shared videos that are unrelated to your company, but related to your activity and/or product.
Memes and GIFs are currently a great source of interaction on social media. Now would be the time to assess whether these formats can be adjusted to your social media strategy.
5. Establish rules for participation in social networks
Social media is a source for getting clients, but it is also ideal for maintaining relationships with clients and finding out all their latest news. That is why it is important to establish rules for effective participation.
So far we have talked about the objectives and tone of the messages separately. But the time has come to merge them. How?
Remember that the goals on social media are: reach, convert and retain. While the tone of the messages must match those goals. Personally, I recommend always keeping this scheme in mind:
social-media-objectives
Typically, the first two steps, attract and inform, complement each other afghanistan phone number list and are more geared toward external communication. You create posts and promote ads to attract businesses and people to your brand. And the inform stage also includes some individual questions from people who are considering purchasing your product or service.
The service phase includes both customer service and social listening. Increasingly, people are using social media as a customer service channel where they can ask questions and leave complaints. That is why it is important for companies to do social listening because it is a good way to find potential customers.
The social media style guide should also define the processes for responding to queries and complaints in the shortest possible time , because as we well know, social media demands immediacy. There are several social listening automation tools that will help you better manage the situation. I also find it useful to make a list of social listening keywords to facilitate tracking.
Creating content for social media
One of the most common mistakes is to think that content is created after having the social media style guide ready. You choose the social networks, the objectives, the tone… and then you create the content. Well, no.
Take your time, and make some key decisions about the content you're going to publish , such as:
Do we only publish internal content or do we share posts from other sources?
If we share internal and external content, what is the relationship between the two types of content?
How do we obtain and approve external content?
What tools will we use to shorten URLs?
What strategy will we use to share links on Instagram?
When do we schedule posts and when do they post spontaneously?
What programming tools are we going to use?
What formats are we going to use? Photos, videos…
Most social media content can be repurposed. For example, resize images to fit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. But this requires a few minutes each day. So if you have limited resources, it's best to start with just one account, rather than trying to cover all of them, which will ultimately hurt your brand image.
Another important point that a corporate social media style guide should have is the planning of publications , that is, establishing a plan indicating how often and what type of content will be published on each social network.
Crisis management
No one wants to deal with a social media crisis, but your style guide wouldn’t be ready without disaster planning . Because social media is so immediate, a scandal or disagreement can erupt quickly. That’s why you need a crisis management plan just in case.
The first step is to identify the person who will be in charge of social media posts. One person should do this task to avoid conflicting messages. Your team will be behind you, but social media contact and posts will be under your control. Your tasks will also include managing posts that were scheduled and assessing whether it is a good time to post or pause them.
Whether it's individual complaints or general crises, communication should maintain the same tone. That is, in stressful situations, the team should remain calm and not be impertinent or dismissive. Even if there are insults in the user's complaint, the insult should never be responded to, only the legitimate complaint. In such a situation, the team should handle negative comments politely and without losing their temper online.
6. Measure the results of the activity
As I have said on other occasions, in digital marketing it is essential to know the results of the activity. To do this, we need to establish metrics and analyse them to better understand our company's environment. For example, review brand mentions, track significant interactions and select the most appropriate KPIs.
One thing that marketers are interested in is knowing where clicks are coming from, which is known as attribution. Attribution strategy only works if we are consistent, so it is worth dedicating a space to it in the social media style guide.
There are several social media attribution tracking tools, both paid and free, such as Google Analytics,
7. Create an image around the brand
With the help of your team, you can create an image around the brand. It is a way of making yourself known, not only professionally, but also to get to know a little about the personality of each professional in the company. For example, you can motivate the team to be active on social networks with their own accounts, to share corporate content on their Linkedin, or to publish photos of celebrations in the office.
team-bannister-global
If this idea fits with your company's philosophy, remember to let people be themselves. If you don't want them to post anything work-related, make that clear.
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